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Canon bombardment failed

Hi...
often when I bombard using a cannon it says 'bombardment failed'. this happens way more than 50% of the time. And I am bombarding a square that is directly adjacent to mine, and there are no mountains.

I only build cannons in preparartion for an artillary upgrade and when I use them I consider their effectiveness a bonus.

In fact in my current game I bombarded an enemy tile improvement from a railroaded mountain and all seven of the cannon bombardments failed. In the same turn six other cannons all successfully bombarded an enemy troop stack on my border. In general their results are nice but not to be depended on. However, artillary is something else.

okay I'm confused again... I would love to upgrade my cannons. I have other cities producing artillery, and I have Replacable Parts. but when I try to upgrade, it says 'we have not a single cannon that can be upgraded'! Why is that??

The way I look at it is that even when they fail alot, the bombardment from cannons is a bonus. Over time, it is more beneficial (much more beneficial), then if you'd spent the production on normal units. Even if you have a stack of 10 cannon, and out of that stack, you only manage to hit once and reduce the defensive unit by a point, if you use that stack enough times, they will pay for themselves. Bombardment is the only way to weaken defensive units without losing offensive units. It might take you 2 or 3 calvary to kill one fortified rifleman (meanting you lost 1 or 2 calvary on the attack). If your stack of cannon can reduce the defender enough to allow you to take it with no loss of calvary (or even just one less loss on average), it wont take very many battles before those cannon have paid for themselves.

With artillery, it gets much better. I've been able to set up kill zones where I'll wipe out an entire stack (8-10) infantry/marines without losing a single unit. Not just once, but every single turn. Bombardment is the key to victory over the AI in the late industrial age onward. Learn to use it. Learn to love it!

Originally posted by Wakboth The way I look at it is that even when they fail alot, the bombardment from cannons is a bonus. Over time, it is more beneficial (much more beneficial), then if you'd spent the production on normal units. Even if you have a stack of 10 cannon, and out of that stack, you only manage to hit once and reduce the defensive unit by a point, if you use that stack enough times, they will pay for themselves. Bombardment is the only way to weaken defensive units without losing offensive units. It might take you 2 or 3 calvary to kill one fortified rifleman (meanting you lost 1 or 2 calvary on the attack). If your stack of cannon can reduce the defender enough to allow you to take it with no loss of calvary (or even just one less loss on average), it wont take very many battles before those cannon have paid for themselves.

With artillery, it gets much better. I've been able to set up kill zones where I'll wipe out an entire stack (8-10) infantry/marines without losing a single unit. Not just once, but every single turn. Bombardment is the key to victory over the AI in the late industrial age onward. Learn to use it. Learn to love it!

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yes but one of the problems is that you quite often end up destroying city improvements. I hate doing that. It wastes my time building something that I've just destroyed

Praetorian. You don't get to keep very many improvements anyway, so it generally doesn't matter much. All culture producting improvements are destroyed when you take a city, so you'll lose their temple, colluseum, cathedral, library, and university anyway. The only things at risk are barracks (actually I'm not sure you keep barracks anyway. Either that or the AI just doesn't build them very often), and granery (again. Same thing. AI maybe just doesn't build them often). The only improvements that I know you capture are those that affect the city size or the trade routes. Aqueducts, hospitals, harbors, and airports are the only improvements that I can remember directly ever capturing. Again, maybe you can capture marketplaces and such, but I don't recall every doing it whether I used bombardment or not.

The possibility of losing improvements that you'd actually want and be able to keep anyway is pretty minimal next to the advantage of using bombardment to take cities.

Using bombardment, you can reduce defenders to the point where you can destroy each defender with a single attacking unit, most often without losing any attacking units.

Using bombardment, you can reduce the size of the city prior to taking it. Reducing it below a size 7 will remove the defensive bonus the city gives to defenders. Also, a smaller city takes up fewer units to elminate resistance, and has a lower chance over time to flip back to the civ you just took it from.

All bombardment units give this advantage. Catapults and cannons work just fine. You just tend to need more of them to get the same effect. However, a military force made up of as few as a half dozen defensive units, and a half dozen offensive units, and 20 or so cannon, can literally walk right through virtually any defender's territory and take city after city with minimal need for resuply. (assuming similar tech levels).

This allows you to conduct warfare while expending less of your own civilizations resources (or get more warfare done by expending the same amount). Everything in Civ is about making any action you take more expensive for the other civs then for you. Simply matching up your war production capability against an opponents will work in chieftan and warlord games wonderfully (and is a lot of fun actually!). It'll probably even work on the mid difficulty games. However, once you get past the mid point in difficulty, the AIs will always out produce you given the same number of cities and the same resources. You cannot go toe to toe with them. Effective use of bombardment allows you to destroy many of his units at a low unit cost to yourself. That means that in the long run, you'll win since he's wasting more resources fighting you then you're expending fighting him. That's what you want to do.

The cost to rebuild a city improvement in a city that probably wont produce much for you anyway is extremely minimal compared to the cost to keep building units because it costs you 8 or 10 units every time you take an AI city. Why are you spending all those units just to save an aqueduct or a marketplace? Don't worry about improvements. Just take the city and lose as few units as possible doing it. Follow that strategy and you'll win every war you ever fight with the AI.

Originally posted by Wakboth Praetorian. You don't get to keep very many improvements anyway, so it generally doesn't matter much. All culture producting improvements are destroyed when you take a city, so you'll lose their temple, colluseum, cathedral, library, and university anyway. The only things at risk are barracks (actually I'm not sure you keep barracks anyway. Either that or the AI just doesn't build them very often), and granery (again. Same thing. AI maybe just doesn't build them often). The only improvements that I know you capture are those that affect the city size or the trade routes. Aqueducts, hospitals, harbors, and airports are the only improvements that I can remember directly ever capturing. Again, maybe you can capture marketplaces and such, but I don't recall every doing it whether I used bombardment or not.

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I've captured Marketplaces before. Helps in quieting the rable, as it were.

I'm pretty sure at one time or another I've been able to keep all the non-culture buildings. By that I mean, not all in the city, but I've had all of them at one point or another 'saved'.

Also, research labs create culture. So if a city has these, you can't keep them.

Originally posted by Wakboth The possibility of losing improvements that you'd actually want and be able to keep anyway is pretty minimal next to the advantage of using bombardment to take cities.

Using bombardment, you can reduce defenders to the point where you can destroy each defender with a single attacking unit, most often without losing any attacking units.

Using bombardment, you can reduce the size of the city prior to taking it. Reducing it below a size 7 will remove the defensive bonus the city gives to defenders. Also, a smaller city takes up fewer units to elminate resistance, and has a lower chance over time to flip back to the civ you just took it from.

All bombardment units give this advantage. Catapults and cannons work just fine. You just tend to need more of them to get the same effect. However, a military force made up of as few as a half dozen defensive units, and a half dozen offensive units, and 20 or so cannon, can literally walk right through virtually any defender's territory and take city after city with minimal need for resuply. (assuming similar tech levels).

This allows you to conduct warfare while expending less of your own civilizations resources (or get more warfare done by expending the same amount). Everything in Civ is about making any action you take more expensive for the other civs then for you. Simply matching up your war production capability against an opponents will work in chieftan and warlord games wonderfully (and is a lot of fun actually!). It'll probably even work on the mid difficulty games. However, once you get past the mid point in difficulty, the AIs will always out produce you given the same number of cities and the same resources. You cannot go toe to toe with them. Effective use of bombardment allows you to destroy many of his units at a low unit cost to yourself. That means that in the long run, you'll win since he's wasting more resources fighting you then you're expending fighting him. That's what you want to do.

The cost to rebuild a city improvement in a city that probably wont produce much for you anyway is extremely minimal compared to the cost to keep building units because it costs you 8 or 10 units every time you take an AI city. Why are you spending all those units just to save an aqueduct or a marketplace? Don't worry about improvements. Just take the city and lose as few units as possible doing it. Follow that strategy and you'll win every war you ever fight with the AI.

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Good points, this. Keep in mind too, that having bombard units around when an AI SoD comes along can mean the difference between keeping and losing a city. The AI will usually withdraw those units to neutral territory to heal them up. Many a time I've saved a city by bombing the beejeezus out of an AI SoD.